


need against need against need

by acroamatica



Series: not from the absence of violence, but despite the abundance of it [2]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Aftercare, Alcohol, Flogging, Kylo Ren doesn't know how to feelings, M/M, Post-Canon, angst and shouting, graphic depictions of board meetings, neither does Hux tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-18 19:24:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5940312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acroamatica/pseuds/acroamatica
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hux brings Ren back to Snoke. Then he takes the punishment he deserves. Then he takes the punishment he needs. He still hasn't taken the punishment he's earned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Content warning** for moderately graphic depictions of the before and after, but not the during, of flogging.
> 
> Thanks to CyanideBreathmint, who did not write this with me but without whom this would not have been written. Thanks also to T. Love you.
> 
> Directly follows the events of [_(nunc lento sonitu dicunt) morieris_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5711578). Chapter 2 is coming soon.

Imagine that the world is made out of love. Now imagine that it isn’t. Imagine a story where everything goes wrong, where everyone has their back against the wall, where everyone is in pain and acting selfishly because if they don’t, they’ll die. Imagine a story, not of good against evil, but of need against need against need, where everyone is at cross-purposes and everyone is to blame.

\- Richard Siken

\----

Everyone was a little quieter than usual. That had to be all that was creating the unusual silence on board the Finalizer; not the number of people that had been there, and now were not; certainly not the fact that those who were left barely spoke to each other as they sped towards a place many of them had never anticipated they would go; and above all it had nothing to do with Kylo Ren being sequestered in Medical instead of rampaging about the ship as he was wont to do.

No, it was just unusually quiet. That was all.

Hux stared at the cup of caf he’d mostly been avoiding all morning rather than actually drinking it. It was never what he wanted it to be at the best of times, and he’d taken a cup this morning more for something to do with his hands than because he really wanted one.

Ren had not called for him. Hux had rather expected that he would, as imperious as he usually was about his wishes. He hadn’t been at all shy about dragging Hux in by the amygdala the night before. Surely it wasn’t beyond him to send a simple message.

But then, of course, Ren had said he was going to meditate and focus. Who knew what that entailed. Perhaps even now he was levitating above the bedcovers as the droids cheeped at him – or fully catatonic in a healing trance. Nearly anything was technically possible. Hux had no idea what Knights of Ren recovering from near-death injuries were meant to do.

All Hux knew for certain was that he was absolutely not going to go down, or enquire, or do anything that stated or implied any particular interest in Ren’s wellbeing. He was fine. Obviously he was fine. The Finalizer had excellent medical facilities and he was in them; therefore he was fine and Hux really needed to stop thinking about it.

The caf was cold and horrible. Hux took a sip anyhow. It was nearly shipboard afternoon and he didn’t think he’d get terribly far into the evening without at least a mild stimulant.

The events of the night before had cleared his head somewhat, though his eyes still hurt and his throat had come up with some fairly spectacular bruising. At least they’d ended up by having the one and only rational, reasonable discussion Hux could ever remember.

Ren had always been combative. The first time Snoke had told Hux he was going to favour the General with the presence of his particular protégé on board Hux’s flagship, Hux recalled actually having been excited about it. It was absolutely a compliment; there weren’t ever that many Knights of Ren and they did not often come aboard First Order ships. Ren’s own ship was too small for the distances involved, and he needed Hux’s troops. That was all well and good. Whatever the First Order required, Hux was prepared to provide, and he had stood ready to offer all the assistance his high-ranking colleague of sorts might need.

But then, of course, he had _met_ Kylo Ren.

Haughtiness was something Hux was well acquainted with, but Ren took it to new heights. It had immediately been clear to Hux that rather than being treated as the valued and valuable officer he was, or given any of the respect that should have been due someone of his rank and record, Ren was going to view him as a rival. Why, Hux couldn’t imagine. If _he’d_ been born with the ability to use the Force… well. It didn’t do to daydream. 

It had been positively insulting, the way Ren had stormed around commandeering the very troops he disparaged, then leading them into chaotic battles only half of them came back from and daring to blame it on _them_ , not on any particularly obvious lapses of tactical planning such as might have been the fault of an overenthusiastic and underprepared leader.

And it was completely unfair of him to then run to Snoke and complain about how badly things were going, as if he’d let Hux have half a chance to remedy anything.

 _Snoke_ had listened to Hux, at least, and that had been sweet vindication, but then Ren had begun taking out his feelings on the furnishings, which were both blameless and expensive. For a while Hux had honestly wondered if Ren had been given some sort of secret command to sabotage the mission by any means necessary.

Well. Here they were, and if that had been the command it couldn’t possibly have been done better.

As frustrating as Ren had been to him, though, he had meant what he had said: working together was their best chance, possibly their only chance, of making all this right. Now that he knew a little more about Ren, he had some idea of how much the man might actually be the key to unravelling the Resistance. If he could just work with Ren – even now – there might still be something they could do.

The spectre of that still-unborn plan was hanging over him as the afternoon wore on, still with no messages from Ren. Dozens of messages had come in from other contacts in that time, of course. It seemed that the Finalizer was not the only ship that had been summoned to the vicinity of the world Snoke had chosen for his home base. It also seemed that an enormous number of people had been particularly counting on the First Order’s destruction of the Hosnian system. A few of them wished to congratulate him. Others… well. Others, a large number of others, were not pleased that an investment the size of Starkiller Base had been deployed exactly once before being destroyed, even if they had at least achieved something first.

Everyone wanted a meeting, though, and most of them would have to be face-to-face. Hux, who had become a general so that other people could go to the meetings while he planned and supervised more important things, was not thrilled with the way his schedule was filling up.

The other issue hanging over Hux was not a small thing either. Snoke had not sent any messages personally since the day before, only an imperious electronic invitation from his staff for Hux to attend him with Kylo Ren at their earliest convenience upon their scheduled arrival. Lingering on board would not be tolerated, was the subtext of the invitation. It was known when they would arrive, and how long it should take them to be waiting on the steps of Snoke’s headquarters. Any deviation would be noted. (Punished.)

The two to three weeks of meetings in his calendar did not provide any comfort against the fact that it was entirely possible Snoke would strike him down on the spot. Or perhaps he’d order Ren to do it. He’d certainly ordered Ren to do worse; compared to what it had cost him to kill Han Solo, Hux was fairly sure Ren could run him through without so much as flinching.

It didn’t help to think about it. He made spreadsheets instead, lists of everything they still had and everything they would need. Lists of what he would authorise and what he would not. Lists of who would be promoted into the empty places in his crew. Lists of the people he would need to consult about that.

It was all looking quite bleak by the time his bridge shift was finished. To the tidal wave of meetings, he’d been able to add a half-dozen more, not one of which was likely to end with any particularly good news. They were on schedule to get to Snoke, still, at least. He could retreat to his quarters, keep on with the spreadsheets and the meeting requests and the neverending administrative drudgery that followed humiliating strategic defeat. How delightful.

Dinner in the officer’s mess was so unmemorable that he’d quite forgotten it by the time he got back to his quarters. He activated his holoface, and stared, unseeing, through it for a few minutes, not reading any of the words that scrolled past.

What point was there in any of it, really?

 _And yet it must be done,_ he told himself, the same way he’d told himself to do every distasteful task he’d ever been assigned. _Just because it’s not glorious doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter._

There was precious little chance of glory in the next little while, that much was certain. He might do himself a favour by becoming used to the paper-pushing. If Snoke ever put him in charge of another major military strike, he would prove himself to be a bigger optimist than Hux was himself.

He made a half-hearted attempt at swatting some of the incessant cloud of incoming messages, for an hour or two, and objectively, it was work done that needed to be done. But he was not unaware of the little leap of excitement every time there was a new message, nor of the immediate return to glumness when yet again it was from someone other than Kylo Ren.

Ren was fine. He was definitely fine. And Hux was fine too. In fact, it was a good thing. Look at all the work he’d done without Ren interfering. And nothing further had been smashed, or disrupted, or lost on some desert planet whilst hunting ghosts and old men.

Ren didn’t even like him.

He didn’t even like Ren.

 _Why_ was he even thinking about it still?

He flicked the holoface off, disgustedly, and headed for his bed. If he was going to be useless for anything, he might as well at least be rested for tomorrow – another long and boring day of hyperspace and administration.

He slept badly, waking often for no reason he could determine since both the light and the temperature in his quarters were constant, the bed was exactly the same as it had always been, and nobody was calling out to him via their strange wizardry. The third or fourth time he had come suddenly back to wakefulness, he had thought deliberately in the direction of Medical - _Ren? Did you need me?_ \- but there had been no response of any sort, nor any messages of any other kind from Ren or from Medical when he’d checked, and he’d put himself resolutely back to bed. It was all just silliness and it was going to have to stop.

The next day was only different because it was even less interesting. He knew he should have been preparing himself, mentally, for the vast kaleidoscope of possible things Snoke could say or do, but the sheer scope of the possibilities was so overwhelming that he couldn’t pick a direction in which to focus.

There were still no messages from Kylo Ren.

He sleepwalked through his responsibilities, nearly on autopilot. The stack of meeting notifications was such that he thought it might become self-sustaining – that all he would ever do, for the rest of his life, was attend meetings, and never with anyone he actually wanted to see.

It was a terribly empty feeling.

He slept again, and woke again, over and over throughout the night. He was conscious only of being conscious, solipsistically.

In the morning he rose early, having given up on any sort of satisfying rest, and devoted the extra time to making absolutely sure that the dress jacket that would most likely have the stripes cut off it was at least perfectly pressed and that the boots he would be forced to stare at were shiny enough to reflect back his humiliated face. Then, at long last, he went to Medical.

He did not wait for the droids, but swept straight into Kylo Ren’s room.

It was empty.

“Lord Ren has gone to his quarters, General,” one of the droids supplied from behind him. “He was scheduled to be released and he wished to prepare for his audience with Supreme Leader Snoke.”

“I see,” said Hux, feeling rather nettled that this was the first he’d heard of it. “I will seek him there.”

Ren’s quarters were a long walk away, during which Hux thought resentfully about people disregarding authority, but he did his best to compose his face before pressing the panel to request entry.

The door opened, which surprised Hux just a little. Ren, fully dressed in his usual black garb, was leaning forward, his weight on the leg that had been wounded in the fight, stretching the damaged muscle and letting it work.

“How are you feeling?” Hux said, as the door shut behind him. “Well rested? I was hoping that your lack of communication meant that you were concentrating on your recovery.”

Ren blinked slowly at him. “I am ready to face my Master, General. Are you?”

“Of course I am,” Hux said. He had no idea if that was the truth or not.

Ren stretched farther. The injured leg wobbled slightly and he corrected hard with his core, and caught his breath – almost silently. Almost.

Hux narrowed his eyes. “Lord Ren.”

“General?” Ren closed his, clearly and obviously trying to shut everything else out but the feedback from his body.

“Are you certain that you are healed enough to return to your training?” He wasn’t. Hux had seen enough injured soldiers in his time, and this one needed to be back under the watchful eyes of the droids. Hux wondered what Ren’s thick layers of black clothes were hiding. Was he still taped up with bacta bandages from neck to waist? Or worse yet, had he abandoned them?

“My Master has requested my presence. I will attend him.” Ren eased himself back out of the stretch and stood, letting his full height and the nasty red scar across his face do everything they could to show Hux, without any further display of overt domination, that he was not going to be moved on this point. “Any opinions I might have on this are entirely irrelevant, General – as are yours. I will go. I do not know if you must come with me, but you will not stop me.”

There was never much that could be gained by arguing with Ren. “I will expect you in the main hangar at 0930 then. We will be dropping out of hyperspace just prior to that and will need to depart nearly immediately if we are to make this meeting.”

“Fine.” Ren turned away, and Hux very carefully did not sigh as he headed back out into the corridor.

His instructions from Snoke had specified that, at the Supreme Leader’s command, he was to be given living quarters within Snoke’s official residence. Hux assumed this was mostly so that he would be close at hand and easily summoned if anything was needed of him. Part of him, however, had noted that it would also really hinder his chances of escape.

But that was not a loyal thought, nor a thought particularly befitting someone who was, still, at that moment, a General of the First Order. Hux squashed it and packed a bag with all he would reasonably need for a stay that could extend… a long while. Snoke had never said how long. Until he was done with Hux, presumably.

He met up with the small delegation that was heading planetside on the way to the hangar. For a wonder, it appeared that Ren had taken his instructions seriously; he swooped out of a connecting hallway, a trooper trotting behind him with a bag containing Ren’s meagre belongings, and joined the group, falling in beside Hux and matching his pace without a word.

 _He must miss his mask,_ Hux thought. Ren’s expression was carefully schooled into a vague, non-specific menace, but there were still people looking at his face. Not surprising. Many on board the ship had probably never seen it before.

“Stand by to exit hyperspace,” a bland computer voice intoned from the internal loudspeakers.

Automatically, Hux and every other trained crew member stepped towards their nearest wall, catching hold of the rail and bending their knees to ride out the deceleration as the Finalizer dropped out of hyperspace. Only Ren, who had not spent most of his life practicing that exact drill, did not. He stumbled, as the deck juddered under their feet, and could not catch himself.

Without thinking, the movement instinctual, Hux dove forward, still hanging onto the rail with the ends of his fingers, and grabbed a handful of Ren’s undercoat to haul him back towards the wall. Ren locked both hands around Hux’s other arm and shoulder, bent double, and let their momentum carry him back, slamming Hux into the panelling with the point of his shoulder. Hux grunted, the breath driven out of him, but Ren had the rail now and in a second –

“Deceleration protocols complete,” announced the computer, and everyone let go. Except Hux, who still had an armful of Ren.

“Are you injured?” Hux said, as Ren straightened slowly. Then Hux noticed the darker patch slowly spreading on the black fabric of Ren’s undercoat. He swiped a finger across it. Red.

“Ren,” Hux said sharply. “You’re bleeding.”

“I am aware,” Ren said. His voice was tight. “We must continue to the hangar.”

“Have Medical meet us there,” Hux barked at one of his staff, who hurried to a comms panel.

“No _time_ ,” Ren said. He was pale, his eyes all pupil, but he broke into a jog.

Hux glanced at his chrono. The problem was that he was right. There was no time. Snoke would know they had arrived. They had to board that shuttle.

“If you were one of my troops,” Hux grumbled, as they jogged along the corridor, “I would order you back to Medical immediately.”

“But I am not, _General_ ,” Ren said, without even turning his head back to look at Hux. “And I do not take my orders from _you_.”

A drop of blood spattered on the floor. Hux bit his tongue hard, held back the angry retort on the tip of it, and ran faster.

They made the shuttle on time, sliding into their seats as the pilot began the takeoff routines. By chance or by design, Ren had managed to get several troopers between himself and Hux, and sat closer to the front, staring out the front viewport while Hux looked daggers at the back of his head and wondered if the sheer force of his annoyance would clot Ren’s blood for him.

Perhaps it was nothing to him. He certainly didn’t seem concerned, as any reasonable person would be. Very well. Hux wouldn’t be either.

In what seemed like no time at all, the shuttle had dropped through the atmosphere of the planet and landed in the middle of what appeared to be a small local airfield operating at about ten times its normal capacity. Four black-coated First Order troops marched up in lockstep and waited just outside the shuttle’s ramp. That would be their welcome party, then.

Hux shouldered his bag and headed down the ramp, doing his best to project calm authority.

“General Hux,” said one of the soldiers, and they all saluted. “Lord Ren. Supreme Leader Snoke is waiting. You will come with us please, sir.”

It wasn’t a request. Ren strode down the ramp with his bag, robes swirling in the dust of the airfield, and they followed the troops through the chaos of the airfield towards a large six-seat speeder. The lead soldier slid into the pilot’s seat; two in front, two in back and Hux and Ren in the middle.

Luckily the ride wasn’t long and they didn’t have to try to make conversation. The speeder deposited them and the two soldiers from the back seat at the front gate of what appeared to be an immense palace of a place, deliberately designed to be both elegant and intimidating.

Hux reminded himself that he was not going to be cowed by architecture, set his shoulders straight, and followed the soldiers up the long pathway to the towering black stone columns of the entranceway.

The house was dazzlingly huge, and he hoped that at some point they might be provided a map; he was lost within five minutes of entering the maze of corridors off the foyer. He knew it was likely this was intentional. At any rate, they would no doubt be guided, wherever they went, both because it was courteous and because it ensured they didn’t get into anywhere they weren’t meant to be.

“Supreme Leader Snoke has directed you be given the honour of rooms in the wing housing the current and future Knights of Ren,” one of the soldiers said, as he stopped outside a mostly unremarkable door. “General, this room will be yours for the duration of your stay.” He typed a code on the lock panel and the door slid open. “You may leave your bag here for the moment.” 

Hux committed the room number and the access code to memory, and dropped his bag on the low divan just inside, then followed the soldiers back out.

“Lord Ren,” the soldier said, stopping again a half-dozen doors down. “You may recall this room from your previous time here.”

“I do,” Ren said, as he typed the code himself and the door opened obediently. “This will serve well.”

Hux carefully repeated Ren’s code to himself as well. One never knew when it might be useful to have someplace else one could get into.

Then it was back down the maze of hallways, and not the way they had come; but the hallways were getting larger again, and more opulent, and they stopped in front of a set of double doors so large and grand that Hux knew this was Snoke’s audience chamber.

The troops posted to either side of the doors pulled them open, and Hux swallowed and walked forward, one step behind Ren.

The sheer _presence_ that Snoke exuded, even over holoprojections, had always been immense. In person, it was much, much stronger. So much stronger that Ren almost fell to his knees when they reached the smaller dais in front of Snoke’s throne, managing to lend the movement a tiny bit of grace only by what looked like years of practice kicking in. Hux, not so practiced, felt nonetheless that he would very much like to kneel also, and did, following Ren’s lead and bowing until his forehead nearly touched the cold flagstones of the floor.

“Master,” Ren said, his voice low. “I have come home. I seek your guidance. I need your correction.”

“Kylo Ren.” Snoke took his time about the name, and it was reproof and disbelief and disappointment at once. Ren shuddered. “You bring me back nothing but your life, and less of that than I already had.”

“I failed, Master.” Ren was almost inaudible.

“I know this, Kylo Ren.”

Ren looked halfway up, his hair still hanging in his face and hiding it from Hux. “I seek your guidance,” he repeated. “I need your correction.” It was clearly some sort of mantra.

“You shall have it,” Snoke said. “Your training is not yet complete. Perhaps it is for that reason that you have failed.”

“I did what you asked of me, Master.” Ren’s voice rose a little. “I struck a blow to the heart of the Resistance. I killed Han Solo. And the power of the dark side is still not strong enough in me.” It was less a sentence than a cry of pain. “What more can I do?”

“Be still,” Snoke said, and Ren fell silent so immediately it was like a spell, pressing his forehead back to the floor in full obeisance, complete submission. “You will be shown. But first.” There was a pause, and Hux felt the weight of Snoke’s gaze on him as a physical sensation. “General Hux.”

He didn’t, couldn’t look up. “Supreme Leader.”

“You have brought me my student, General, and for that I thank you. But it does not pay for all the debts the First Order has incurred, nor will it rebuild what you have allowed to be lost.” Snoke’s disapproval radiated into Hux’s very bones. “There is much work to do. I believe you have already begun to receive messages regarding that.”

“Yes, Supreme Leader.” That was putting it very mildly.

“I wish you to attend these meetings personally – all of them. They have wisdom to impart to you, and you have need of it. They also have power within their home systems, and I have need of that, so you will be receptive and pleasant and allow them to feel that they are being heard by someone high-ranking. You will not make excuses to them. All that you do, General, you do on my behalf and as my representative. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Lord Snoke. I understand.” Hux kept his head low. “Thank you, my Lord.”

“You are dismissed.”

For a moment he stayed frozen, as though he could not remember how to stand. But then his legs came back under his control and he did all he could to walk out of the chamber with what was left of his usual military briskness, now sadly tattered.

From behind him, he heard Snoke: “Now. My student. Let the lessons begin again.”

The heavy double doors of the chamber shut behind Hux, but as the soldiers walked him away, he could still hear Kylo Ren start to scream.

\----

Had Snoke meditated on it for weeks, Hux doubted he could have chosen a more unpleasant punishment than the third hour of this meeting of the board of directors of some corporation or other – he had quite forgotten what they did or what their particular value was to the First Order, but they were very clear on both of those things, and also very clear on the fact that he had been sent there for them to yell at.

It had been several days of absorbing the verbal abuse and insults of dozens of angry businesspeople, politicians and First Order members, and he was approaching the absolute outer limits of what he could take. Hux was no longer accustomed to being shouted at – the list of people who had been willing to take the risk of doing so before Starkiller had been destroyed had become very short indeed. Now, he held his tongue, bowed and scraped to yet another roomful of petty warlords and jumped-up traders, and hated absolutely everything about what his life had become.

The death he had anticipated would have been easier, he was sure of it. His lower back hurt from maintaining his posture in bad chairs, and his jaw throbbed at the hinge where the tendons tightened it. But he would obey his orders, and agree like a good little puppet, and nod and smile and assure Madam Chairwoman that he understood their concerns and would address them, yes, most certainly.

He checked his chrono as surreptitiously as he could. This was his last meeting of the day, well past the point when he would normally have had a meal. If they could wrap this up in the next hour he might still get out on time. Then perhaps somewhere there would be something warm and moderately palatable to eat – the rations they were given were not luxurious, nor even up to the shipboard standards he was used to, but they would do – and a brief, blessed window where he could lick his wounds.

At least Snoke had left his rank intact; they could sneer “ _General_ ” at him and remind him how much the title was currently worth to him, but he could still pinch the stiff ribbon at the spot where his sleeve creased and think about what order he would line them up in, for the firing squad.

“And what do you plan to do about our interests in the trading consortium, General?” said the particularly persistent Devaronian to Hux’s right, bringing his attention back to the matters unfortunately at hand.

“What would you _like_ me to do, Captain Shalkha?” Hux parried wearily. “You understand that the First Order is not currently in a position to guarantee anything, not until we have our own guarantees. You saw for yourselves what we were able to accomplish, in the Hosnian system. Could this not be a token of good faith?”

“Much as we appreciated the removal of that pit of stale breath that was the Senate, it is not enough.” The Devaronian thumped the table, making all the slates jump and skitter. “The weapon you used for that attack – it was destroyed. You cannot perform this great miracle of deliverance again. Do not think we know nothing.”

Hux saw fire behind his eyelids, the endless loop that had played for a week and would play for the rest of his life. “I do not think you know nothing, Captain. But the First Order has many resources.”

“Fine.” Shalkha sat back and crossed his arms. “Use them to produce something as impressive as that, and we can discuss our alliance further.” He smiled. “But I wouldn’t wait too long to marshal your many resources if I were you, General. We are a folk not known for our unending patience with failure.”

And there it was, that word again, that made him taste blood from the spot on the point of his tongue that was between his eyeteeth. 

He could feel Snoke, watching him, as though he was standing behind him. Testing him.

“We thank you for your time,” Hux said slowly. “We thank all of you. The First Order values you greatly. You shall have cause to know that.”

It was the seventeenth time he’d said it. No-one had yet said it back.

The firing squad would be too swift, too merciful. It would have to be trial by combat at the very least.

\----

The quarters assigned to Hux were not, to be fair, as austere as he would have thought they would be from the example Ren had set. The bed was comfortable enough. There was a sitting area where one could conceivably entertain a visitor, with a low table and a divan not too ill-suited to reclining upon. There were no decorations on the walls, but all of the furniture was carved and upholstered with care and an eye to the lines. 

It would not have been unpleasant at all were it not for the fact that his neighbours were Knights of Ren. And as usual, the honour of sharing a living space with the Knights of Ren was doing nothing good for Hux’s blood pressure.

Some of his questions regarding Ren’s seemingly inhuman capacity to bear pain had been answered, if nothing else. The training the Knights endured seemed to spend an enormous amount of time and energy on channelling pain into their powers. Unfortunately, that meant a lot of screaming, at a wide variety of hours. Perhaps they no longer noticed that, after a while, either.

But Hux still did, and still found it unsettling enough that despite how worn he was, he did not feel like sleeping.

Someone up the hallway was screaming now, in short staccato yelps that suggested that perhaps they were being flogged. _That should be calming,_ Hux thought wryly. _Just imagine you’re back at the Academy._

In a way, he missed it. Discipline at the Academy was legendarily tight. If you put a foot out of line, you were for it. If that foot was wearing an improperly polished shoe, your stripes would double. But then it would happen, and it would be over, and you could get on with your life, lesson learned. There was no stretching it out over weeks. Not like what was happening to him now. What he would have given for twenty strokes instead of this endless _explain yourself, General_ and _not good enough, General_ , trade the verbal lashings for a physical one that he knew how to endure.

He was learning his lesson. He was. But it would have been nice to have more than 30 seconds pass without someone bringing up some new way in which he was a disappointment.

What he needed, he thought suddenly, was to relax.

One of the delegations he had seen that morning had mentioned something about a place where one could get a decent drink, if one didn’t mind paying. Most likely whatever else one wanted, decent or not, if one also didn’t mind paying, had been the subtext. That morning, being shuttled between rooms full of disgruntled half-allies, he had seen the front door again for the first time since his arrival. Now he knew how to get out, and how to get back in again.

He dressed with care, leaving behind all his insignia of rank or station. No uniform jacket. Only the standard-issue black shirt and pants that all crew were given, to go under their armour. It marked him clearly enough as First Order, but that was all.

He wondered, as he hung his jacket in the wardrobe, whether anyone would try to stop him leaving the house. It seemed too simple. Just walk out, go to a debatably seedy bar, and order a drink as though he were nobody special.

Of course Snoke would be watching him. Snoke was always watching him. Perhaps especially now. If he were to be stopped, well and good. He would come back. No-one had forbidden him to leave.

It was only a drink.

It took more resolve than he felt it should have done to leave his room. But leave he did, and once he started walking (briskly, but not too briskly, that perfect speed that suggested whatever he had to do was more important than anything anyone might think to stop him with) it was as though the momentum carried him out through the doors and into the night before he quite realised it.

The bar was well within the limits of the small city that Snoke’s mansion overlooked. He was glad he had not worn any of his heavy coats, by the time he arrived. It was a warm enough night and the walk had allowed him to set aside all of his thoughts for a little while and just move.

It was even warmer inside, crowded but not packed with a wide variety of customers both humanoid and not. He felt reassured. Nobody would look too hard at him.

The spirits they served were not something he knew the taste of, an unremarkable faintly greenish liquid that burned the back of his throat on the first sip. He pressed on. The first sip was always the harshest. By the time he’d drained the glass he no longer wanted to choke on it, and he ordered another.

Three glasses down and halfway into his fourth, he became aware of a dark figure standing at his elbow. He tried to see the face within their cowl, but between the alcohol and the dim light, he could not.

“You drink as though you would drown, stranger,” the figure said, but warmly enough that Hux couldn’t be bothered to be offended. “Do you seek release from your troubles?”

“Not of that sort, thank you,” Hux said, curtly.

“You do not know what the Disciples can offer you,” the figure said. He thought they might be smiling.

“Actually, I suspect I do,” he said, “and I’m not interested.”

“Deny your needs all you like, stranger.” The figure’s hands disappeared within the sleeves of their robe, and then reappeared with a small rectangle of card. “But you are a soldier, and you misunderstand far more about us than the great deal we understand about you.” They slipped the card gently under Hux’s fingers. “When you are ready.”

“I’m not,” Hux started to say, but the figure had stepped back and vanished into the crowd as though they had never been there.

He frowned, and finished the rest of his drink in one swallow.

There was an address on the card.

It wasn’t all that far. Just a couple of streets over. He’d seen the street name on the way to the bar. In fact, the place was practically on his way back.

He tossed it down on the table. What was he doing? This was a ridiculous shred of an idea, even had he really been considering…

The card had flipped as it landed. It now displayed a logo of sorts: two hands, crossed at the wrist and bound with cord, holding what appeared to be a whip.

He blinked at it.

 _You are a soldier,_ the figure had said, and that implied… 

They couldn’t know. They couldn’t know who he was. It was just the uniform, and the fact that he was sitting up straighter than anyone who’d drunk four glasses of that green stuff ought to, and the fact that he had money to burn on liquor.

No. He wouldn’t go. It was patently impossible. He would leave, now, before anything else happened - leave and go back to the enormous mansion full of screaming, where nothing waited for him but an empty room and an overfull schedule, and more reminders of exactly what he’d come here to forget about.

He closed his eyes and let the edges of the card dig into the creases in his palm.

\----

The door was unmarked, but the light coming from within was warm and welcoming and he raised his hand to knock.

Before his knuckles touched the wood, the door unlatched. Behind it was - the same figure? a different one? - a cape and a cowl and this time, just the thinnest edge of a smile.

“Welcome,” she? maybe she, said.

She took his hand, and led him in.

Inside, everything was incense and velvet, quiet and lush and cozy. Two more figures appeared from the depths and took him, a hand on each shoulder, deeper into the house, the corridors darkening. Finally they opened a door and gently, so gently, pushed him inside.

The door shut with a heavy, slow swish-thud, and suddenly everything was eerily silent. _Soundproofing,_ he thought, his senses still muzzy from the alcohol, and looked around.

The room was spartan, wood-panelled walls and tiles on the floor. A shallow tub was sunk in at one corner, with a bench and a basket along the wall next to it. But it was the cross, sturdy and well-polished wood, with two horizontal bars, that he looked at for the longest.

He felt completely empty of thoughts as he undressed, mechanically folding each piece of clothing as he took it off and placed it in the basket. Then he knelt in the middle of the floor, bowed his head, and waited.

Perhaps they had been watching him. It was only moments before the door swung open again, and then shut. 

There were three of them now, one carrying a large wooden box. He had no idea if they were the same three. One of them ran a finger gently up his spine, and he shivered without meaning to, and got to his feet.

He stood, rested his cheek against the polished wood of the cross and let them take his wrists. They allowed him to stay standing, a tiny mercy and a challenge, as they bound him to the upper crossbar with cords from the box; he had half expected them to make him kneel again, but they did not. If he thought he could stand, they were willing to take his word for it.

The cords around his wrists felt like silk, strong but resilient. More of them went around his upper arms, others around his ankles, pulled apart just far enough that he could stand and feel stable.

Over his shoulder he saw one of them reach into the box again.

A short whip, leather by the looks of it. Braided silk cords, eight or nine of them, tied to a wooden handle. A bundle of reeds lashed together at one end with thread.

Each of them took one.

He closed his eyes and let them start.

\----

He had lost track of both lashes and time early on, going deep into a trance-like state where the pain almost felt as though it were happening to someone else, and it wasn’t until he felt them slack off the ropes on his arms that he knew they had stopped.

He fell backwards, but they caught him, eased him down into the shallow tub on his side. His whole body hummed, like an electrical charge, and he felt nothing and everything.

They sluiced him down with warm water, washing away sweat and maybe tears (had he cried? he didn’t know). It stung as it rivered across what he knew and didn’t care were hundreds of welts. Then they lifted him out of the tub again, wrapped him in a thin cotton robe, and laid him down, flat on his back on the cool tiles, so that he could feel the throb below his skin in exquisite counterpoint to his own heartbeat. They knelt, and folded their hands, as though praying, and let him breathe.

After what seemed like a very long time, they stood. Two of them helped him sit up, guided him to the bench and let him sit there, slowly getting used to being upright again. He didn’t notice one of them had left until they came back, and handed him a steaming cup of some sort of tea, which he held for a while in his hands before he drank it off. The liquid was bitter, fragrant, and soon he felt a different numbness seeping through him. A drug, then. To take the edge off.

They reclaimed the empty cup and left him to get dressed. Between the tisane, the endorphins, and the tail end of the alcohol in his system, the pain was more like a high-pitched background noise, and Hux came back to himself enough to get his boots on the right feet, fumble some credit chits into the hands of the robed figure in the front room, and stagger back through the mostly-deserted midnight streets to the giant mansion, and the maze of hallways, and the tiny room that was his.

Someone was screaming again. Someone was always screaming. It didn’t matter.

Hux fell face-first onto the bed, on top of the blankets, and was asleep before he took a second breath.

\----

His alarm was shrilling, and he reached out automatically to slap it into silence and yelped involuntarily - his muscles remembered more clearly than his brain what they had been through the night before.

He was still fully dressed with his boots on, and he shook his head at himself and his lack of discipline as he pulled them off and rotated his stiff ankles. What a fantastic grasp of protocol and respect for the uniform. Never mind that he had categorically not been in any kind of shape to do anything else. He should still have managed better. He was a Hux. Huxes did not go to bed with their boots on. It was unbecoming.

Undressed now, he padded to the refresher, stopping at the mirror on the way into the shower cubicle to crane his neck over his shoulder and have a look at the kaleidoscope of bruising across his back, shoulders, buttocks and thighs.

They had done a very professional job, he had to admit. The marks were vivid, red and purple and black striped across nearly every inch of his skin, but they had not drawn blood more than once or twice. That was not something the Academy’s disciplinarians would have been able to say. He would heal cleanly, and completely, and none of it would show above the collar. Had anyone asked him, last night, to specify what he wanted, it would have been exactly that. It seemed that they had known, anyhow.

He would have liked to linger in the shower, despite the dull ache as the water beat down on his bruises. But he could not. His first meeting, he knew, was not something he could afford to arrive late to: an audience with Lord Snoke and Kylo Ren.

It was an odd meeting. Snoke did not seem to want much from him beyond confirmation that he had met with the galaxy’s most intractable people, and would go on meeting with them until he was presumably old and grey. There had been no let-up in the schedule yet. Ren was pale and preoccupied, and moving like he hurt, which made Hux wonder. He knew how much pain Ren could soak up without showing a trace, and so it was odd - either he had decided there was no merit in hiding his pain from Hux and Snoke, which seemed unlikely, or his training was going even worse than Hux’s meetings.

Even odder was the number of times Hux caught Ren sneaking glances at him. Ren looked… confused, perhaps.

Hux wasn’t certain what that could be about. There were no visible marks on him, and he was standing poker-straight, not the merest angle betraying the stripes on his back. He had checked himself over very carefully before leaving his room in the morning and he was sure of it. 

But after Snoke dismissed them, as they left the room, Ren loomed up beside him and gave him a very long look. Searching.

“Can I assist you with something, Lord Ren?” Hux said sharply. He was tired of the looks.

Ren shook his head, turned on his heel and swished off in the other direction without a word.

Hux sighed, forcibly dismissed Kylo Ren from his mind, and went off to his next meeting, and the next, and the next.

It was easier to sit through all of the yelling and recriminations with something else to concentrate on. He leaned back against his chair and let the sting and the ache centre him, tried to find the calm eye in the storm that he had found the night before. They couldn’t harm him. He was above them.

Eventually they left him alone, and he went back to his room. It was late, well after dinner, and Hux thought vaguely of another shower, longer this time, and then sleep.

There was a private message waiting for him, blinking on the comm panel. He brought it up while he started to remove his boots.

It was just text, no signature, no defined sender.

“Next time, come to me.”

Hux sucked in an audible breath, calm composure shattered, suddenly violently angry.

Only one person could have sent that. Only one person in the entire universe would have the unmitigated presumption. Only one person could have possibly thought it would be his business, his responsibility, his right to comment.

How _fucking_ dare he.

He shoved his boot back onto his foot and stomped it into place, and stormed out into the hallway for the nth time in the last week in search, _always_ in search of Kylo fucking Ren.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hux knows the value of pain - and for Kylo Ren, and indeed for the fate of the entire First Order, it may be priceless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for flogging and general sadomasochistic pursuits. Because I wasn't going to tease you all with space BDSM and not follow through.
> 
> Content warning also for Kylo Ren being very, very bad at understanding what Hux needs from a dominant. Do not do what Kylo Ren does. (Good life advice in generally all circumstances.)
> 
> Thanks to everyone in my life who has made the phrase "non-erotic flogging" into an in-joke that will never die. This story is not at all what I thought it would be when I started it but I'm fairly proud of what it became in spite of me.
> 
> This continues directly on from the events of Chapter 1 so I recommend starting there.

Hux wished Ren’s assigned room were farther away; he arrived in front of Ren’s door far too quickly to have had any chance to calm himself, and the best he could do was to not shout Ren’s name audibly as he rapped hard on the door. But he was yelling it mentally, and he hoped it gave Ren a headache.

Ren made him wait. He was certain there was no actual reason for it beyond seeing if he could reach boiling point, and when the door finally opened, he was well and truly ready.

“First of all, how _dare_ you,” he started, striding towards Ren, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor, eyes closed, smiling faintly. But he got no farther: Ren raised one hand and the Force closed about Hux’s ankles, lifted him off his feet, encased him in an invisible cocoon from head to toe.

“Be still,” Ren purred, as though Hux had a choice.

He rose to his feet, his movements still showing some of the hesitancy and unbalancedness Hux had seen in their meeting that morning, but his face was calm. “I had not thought you would come so soon,” he said. “From what I could read from you this morning, I had expected that you would find your current condition… satisfactory. You seemed well enough pleased.”

_Put me down,_ Hux thought as loudly as he could.

Ren huffed, the ghost of a laugh. “Why? You are angry, you would strike me.”

_I will not,_ Hux thought, though he had contemplated it and he knew Ren knew that.

“I do not think I believe that,” Ren said, and came closer. “You are angry because you think I presume.” He padded in a slow circle around Hux. “You think I understand very little of the situation. That could not be farther from the truth, you know.” His fingers brushed over the stripe of one particular deeply purple welt and Hux’s breath caught in his throat. “You think that you are somehow different from me. That you seek pain because it relaxes you, takes you out of yourself, while I seek it because it sharpens me and gives me focus. But they are two sides of the same coin.”

_I am not your metaphor,_ Hux thought, sharp-edged.

“No, of course you are nothing of mine,” Ren said, and Hux seethed, hearing the smile even from behind him. “That would never do, would it, General.”

Ren’s hand, his flesh and blood hand, closed over Hux’s shoulder and he pressed his thumb sharply into the bruising.

“You are your own, whole and entire,” Ren continued smoothly, “and need nothing from any man, most particularly my unworthy self, is that not true?” He dug his thumb in deeper and Hux wanted to writhe, wanted to grit his teeth, did neither and knew that it didn’t matter.

“I know nothing of your needs,” Ren said, still unctuously self-satisfied. “Nothing at all.” His hand slipped from Hux’s shoulder.

_You don’t know,_ Hux thought at him, _you don’t. What Snoke does to you is entirely different._

This time the laugh was louder, a real tone instead of just breath. “Of course.” Ren stepped around from behind him, and Hux could see his face now - his smile was wry and dangerous. He gripped the bottom of his shirt in both hands and peeled it over his head in a quick motion that wanted to be smooth. “Entirely.”

Not an inch of Ren’s skin was its normal colour. Bruises bled into bruises, yellow into purple into blue into red, stripes and blotches crowding each other and edging onto the shiny patches of skin just healed, only now beginning to cohere into a single piece. They extended down to his wrists and past his waistband, sparing only his face and hands to leave the impression of normalcy.

“I know nothing,” Ren said, a dark sort of triumph rich in his voice.

A fleeting thought across Hux’s stunned mind - how often had the screams he had been trying to block out been Ren’s?

“Not as often as you might have liked them to be,” Ren said, and of course he’d heard that. “I hope I look as though I have been punished sufficiently for my failures, nonetheless. Your opinions on my performance have certainly been noted.”

Hux tried again to move, with just as much success as before. He did not know what he planned to do, had he been able to move, but - something. Something needed to be done.

“So,” Ren said, and the fasteners on Hux’s jacket all let go at once. “If we have put to rest the notion that I have but little grasp of the situation, shall we come back to the reason you are truly here?”

_I came here to shout at you,_ Hux thought incandescently.

“Perhaps you did,” Ren said, with a nod of acknowledgement. “But that in and of itself would not suffice, I think, given how often you would like to shout at me and do not. So. There is something else, and what that might be is self-evident.” The Force ran gentle fingers up Hux’s chest. “Whether you admit it to yourself is quite irrelevant. You are curious. You found the Disciples, I assume, and they do good enough work, but not what I can do. I can see you in so much more depth. I can see everything that holds you together. I have no need to bruise you so grandly, so showily, when I can simply - undo you.”

Hux allowed himself to grit his teeth this time, and thought as hard as he could about blank grey walls.

Ren snorted. “I can see why Snoke has such faith in you. Your mind is an open book - and the print in it is so large.” He blinked slowly. “You may as well save yourself the effort. You will strain something.” The invisible fingers stopped at his suprasternal notch, lingered. “We waste precious time in this dance, General. Let me show you what I know.”

And then the invisible fingers multiplied, sharpened, and found every pressure point on his torso at the same time.

It was like being struck by lightning. His vision whited out - he couldn’t breathe, didn’t know if his heart would keep beating, and the fingers dug in under his ribs, behind his jaw, either side of his neck -

\- and everything went away.

\----

When the world came back, it looked different.

It took him far too long to realise that that was because he had been standing, and then suspended, and now he was lying on the floor, on his side, with his arms awkwardly pinned under his own weight.

His whole body felt white-hot, but his shoulders most of all, the ligaments stretching in ways they were never meant to. He tried to roll himself over.

Nothing happened. Both arms were dead to the shoulder - in fact, no part of his body seemed to be capable of anything beyond screaming uselessly about how much the position he was in was hurting him.

A noise, then; a terrible noise, a gasping drag of an inhale, but not a noise Hux would ever make, so it couldn’t have been coming from him. It couldn’t. Never mind the pain in his chest, his throat, behind his eyes, everywhere.

“You wake.” A pair of boots drifted into his field of vision, and he realised there was something wrong with his eyes. The boots wouldn’t come into focus. “Good.”

He tried again to move, and there was that sound again, and whoever was making it needed to stop because it was hurting his chest just listening to it.

Perhaps it was better, here on the floor. Perhaps it was easier. If he lay still, just lay still and waited, perhaps things would get better.

“You are being dramatic,” the boots said, and robes pooled around them, and then hands rolled him onto his back.

That was differently awful, he determined, after some analysis that also took far too long. His shoulders were less full of knives, but also more in flames. He didn’t think his ribs were meant to move in those ways, when he breathed, and that sound was still happening and soon he would be forced to admit that maybe it might have something to do with him.

A dark shape came between his eyes and the dancing, swimming lights from the ceiling. “Look at me,” said the shape, and he tried, but nothing would resolve.

He closed his eyes. Something rolled across his cheek.

“Hux. Look at me.”

Everything was beginning to feel very far away again.

“Hux. _Hux_.”

And then the floor was falling away from underneath him, or maybe given the blazing lines of pressurepain across his back and thighs someone had lifted him, or perhaps he was ascending to a life without the voice in his ear, calling his name with increasing and inexplicable concern across the static of onrushing unconsciousness.

Then he was gone.

\----

There were voices, when he came back. Two of them. One very angry, and he knew in the baser parts of his consciousness that that voice, being angry, was a very bad thing, though he couldn’t quite recall why.

“... irresponsibility, in your loss of control - had you forgotten his differences from you? I care nothing for the pursuits he chooses in his own time, but he chose wisely and remained, above all else, capable of performing his duties. He understood the importance of this fact, to me, and that was well-considered. But you have allowed your own selfish desire for dominance to exceed all good sense.”

“Forgive me, Master,” came the second voice, cowed and reedy, and he knew that one as well, with a flash of the remembered feeling of cold stone against his forehead and knees.

“You have damaged an extremely important asset, as you so often do. But this one is mine. And it will cause me great inconvenience not to be able to use him.”

“I understand, Master, I am sorry.”

“This situation you have caused, all on your own, and you will fix it all on your own. I expect you to see to it that he is fit to continue the work for which I require him.”

“Yes, Master. I will do what is needful.”

“You will.”

Something softer than the floor was underneath him now, but it seemed far too much trouble to work out what. Easier to sink into it and go back to the soft grey place where nothing hurt. The voices, at least one of them, would wait.

\----

This time it didn't hurt as much when the light seeped through his eyelids to the point where it seemed reasonable to open them. 

He was on a bed. He was fairly certain it wasn't his own. Someone had taken his jacket and boots off, which had been good of them. There was a blanket over him.

He decided, as tiny attempts at movement revealed the extent of his injuries, that he felt as though he had been in a speeder crash. But his ribs seemed to have settled a little, and he could breathe without that hideous noise, or any at all, as long as he didn't try to breathe too deeply.

There was no-one else in the bedroom to see him wince as he shoved the blanket back and forced himself up to a sitting position, trying to think past the stabbing pain in every muscle.

It would be best if he could get himself back to his room as quickly as possible. He knew where he was, now, and Kylo Ren's bed was frankly not a place Hux wished to be found by anyone. 

His boots were lined up neatly next to the wall, his jacket folded on the small dressing table. It was more care than he would have expected from Ren. He pushed himself off the bed, hobbled over to his boots and nearly fell trying to get into them. His balance was shot. Fine. He could compensate for that.

The jacket posed a problem. He couldn't pull his shoulders far enough back to get into the sleeves, not without wondering if someone had strung him up by his arms while he was unconscious. That was the only thing that could explain how much a simple jacket hurt so badly to put on that there was sweat beading at his temples and upper lip by the time he wrestled it on.

_All right, General,_ he told himself. _You didn't get this far by giving in. You aren't bleeding, you have no broken bones; you can, and you will, stand up straight and walk out of here under your own power. And you can, and you will, get back to your own room, and that is as far ahead as you need to think right at the moment._

It wasn't his finest battle plan, but it would suffice. He pressed his lips into a thin line and _made_ himself stand straight.

He made it as far as the door to the bedroom and opened it. That was good. That was progress.

Kylo Ren was an untidy heap on the divan in the sitting room, face buried in his arms, feet hanging off the end, a tangle of black robes and black hair like a splash of ink over the upholstery. It was comical, the oversized man and the undersized furniture, but laughing would hurt far too much and might wake him, besides, and if Hux could just slip out -

“Stop,” Ren said wearily, and raised his hand without even looking up. “Sit.”

Hux fought the compulsion, as hard as he could, but there was so little left in him. Like a gantry collapsing, he crumpled to the ground.

“You will return to the bed,” Ren suggested, and he could feel the Force under Ren’s words, reminding him just how much he did in fact want to lie still and rebuild himself.

But it was Ren’s suggestion, and that in and of itself was reason enough to push back against it.

“I will not,” he said, and tried very hard to marshal the strength to get back to his feet.

Ren sighed, and unfolded himself from the divan. “You must. Supreme Leader Snoke has commanded me to attend you,” he said, and Hux could taste how bitter those words were in Ren’s mouth, drew some tiny satisfaction from the lines of his face, speaking so eloquently of how little he had expected the situation to become what it had. “I overestimated your tolerance for pain. Lord Snoke has made it clear that I have erred.”

_What a shock,_ Hux thought viciously, knowing that Ren could hear him if he so chose, not caring if he did. _Judging situations correctly, and reacting appropriately, has always been such a strong point of yours._

Ren's face went red. “Don't speak to me like that,” he snapped. “I am not yours to punish.”

“I think I am entitled,” Hux rasped, trusting the condition of his voice to make his point for him. It was as shredded as the rest of him. “I was not yours to punish either, was I, Ren.”

Ren's cheeks went even redder. “You knew what I was offering.”

“And I told you exactly what I wanted,” Hux spat. “An explanation. Not to be trapped and beaten unconscious, then left on the floor like a corpse.”

Ren stared mutinously at his feet. “I gave you my bed,” he said.

“As if that makes up for it!” Hux spluttered. “I cannot believe you. You have no idea what you are doing. You never do. You stumble blindly through life, doing exactly as you please, destroying everything and everyone you touch, with no concern for the reasons there might be rules and customs and accepted codes of behaviour. No - you are the First of the Knights of Ren and you are always correct. Well, enjoy your latest wreckage, Lord Ren.” He pulled his legs up underneath him - he _would_ stand. “I will have nothing further to do with it. And when you find yourself very friendless, very shortly, I suggest you remind yourself of how much of a disaster you are.” He got his knees under him. “There is a reason you fail, and it has nothing to do with the pull of the Light or whatever pathetic excuse you have dreamt up lately.” He needed to stand; his knees were too uncertain, but they _had_ to hold him. “You have no order, and no sense, and it will be your downfall.”

It was a terrific exit line. He turned on his heel, headed for the door as briskly as he could manage, leaving Kylo Ren ruined in his wake.

He made it three steps, almost to within arm’s reach of the door, before his second wind left him, all at once and catastrophically; through the ringing in his ears he heard Ren catch his breath, and then he hit the ground and heard nothing else.

\----

Awakening felt like déjà vu - in Ren’s bed, boots off, blanketed. But this time he had a new and exciting lump on the side of his head that throbbed along with his heartbeat. And there was a large dark shape sitting cross-legged on the floor beside the bed. 

“Hux,” Ren said, slightly too quickly. “You will stay where you are.”

Hux considered the statement and its accompanying Forceful suggestion, and then considered how much effort he felt it would take to lift his hand from the mattress. “I will stay where I am,” he said eventually, from the pillow, “but not because you are tricking me into it. Also, that's insulting, and I can tell you are doing it, and I want you to stop.”

Ren knelt up and reached for something on the table, above Hux's head - a tumbler full of pinkish liquid. 

“I don't care why you stay,” he said, and pulled gently at Hux's shoulders, levering him up onto his side so he could get an elbow under him and handing him the glass. “As long as you do. Drink this.”

“What is it?” Hux sniffed cautiously at it - it smelled bitter and saccharine at the same time, like nobody's idea of a berry.

“I don’t know exactly,” Ren admitted. “It is given to younger trainees when they have pushed too far. It tastes terrible. But it will help with the pain and the muscle weakness.”

What a ringing endorsement. Hux took a sip anyway, a large one, and made himself swallow it. Anything could be borne if it would give him enough strength to leave this bed.

It was just as awful as promised, and it lingered on the palate.

“I know,” Ren said. “I drank a lot of it, when I started.”

“Why are you being kind to me?” Hux asked, letting the question with all its sharp edges hang in the air. “I assume you’ve been ordered to see that I don’t die. Well, I can assure you I will not.” He took another drink of the pink stuff. “Though death might be preferable to this substance.”

“Am I not allowed to be kind?” Ren phrased the question almost jokingly, but Hux saw his shoulders hunch, fractionally and reflexively, drawing him into himself.

Hux didn’t say it, but he thought it before he could stop himself: _I didn’t think you knew how._

“Ah,” Ren said, and sat back down on the floor. “A common assumption. I can understand. I had heard similar things of you - that in your drive towards becoming the future ruler of the galaxy you had relinquished all ability to care for anyone.”

Hux sipped again, distracting himself from that statement, which he found he did not like to think about. The pink stuff was almost gone now, and he imagined he could feel its effects - certainly it seemed less difficult to hold the glass up, though perhaps that was because it was nearly empty.

“You will feel better soon,” Ren said. “And then you can leave me to my disastrous existence.”

“Ren,” Hux said, and didn’t know where he’d meant that sentence to go.

“It’s quite all right,” Ren said, his shoulders slumping ever so slightly more. “You were correct. I mean to help - I mean to triumph. But I fail, and I fail often, and it always seems in hindsight to have been something that someone with more sense will tell me in painful detail how they foresaw. Unless the Force can make something of me, no doubt some day it will see me dead - charging into fights I can’t win, convinced that I can.” He looked up at Hux through the locks of his hair.

“Yes,” Hux said simply. He spread a palm out, a gestural shrug. It was the way of things.

“You will be rid of the thorn in your side, one way or another, General,” Ren said, and hoisted himself up from the floor. “If you are finished?” He held out his hand, and Hux knocked back the last of the awful pink liquid and shuddered as he gave Ren the tumbler.

“You should lie down,” Ren said, and Hux noted both the choice of phrasing and the fact that he felt no subliminal push. “You need to rest while you are being given the chance. I will leave you alone, but I will be close if you require anything.”

It was astonishing delicacy from someone he had always associated more with barging in where he was not wanted and making a nuisance of himself.

Ren smiled, rueful and sad, over his shoulder. “I am learning I am capable of other things than anger.” Then he let himself out and the door shut behind him.

Hux lay back on the pillow and thought directionlessly about choices, and plans, and differences, and fell asleep without really realising it was happening.

\----

When he woke, with the sensation that perhaps a great deal of time had passed, there was a tumbler of water and a clay bowl containing some sort of fruit on the small table. He found himself grateful to Ren, which was a truly odd experience - he needed both the food and the drink, and he wondered as he bit into a smooth-skinned, crunchy red ovoid whether it had been a lucky guess or once again the result of many years of wakings like this.

The pink liquid had done its work. He felt, if not wholly restored, at least a great deal better. The feeling that he might tear clean in half if he moved too quickly had passed, as had the danger of falling on his face again and getting a matched set of bruises on his head. Even the bruise, when he felt at it gently, seemed less tender and swollen.

He swung his legs over the edge of the mattress and stood experimentally. Yes; that was much better. He might even be able to manage parade rest. 

Ren had not indicated, he realised, how long his Snoke-mandated rest was meant to go on for. It seemed certain that Snoke was displeased to have had to grant it at all. If he could stand, if he could think clearly - well then, by his own standards he was fit for duty.

He was hopelessly creased, sleep-rumpled. He would have to tidy himself up before presenting himself in Snoke's audience room to receive whatever judgement the Supreme Leader might hand down to him for his own part in all this.

With his boots on once again, sincerely hoping that this time he would be the one to take them off, he put his head out of the door, expecting Ren to be watching him already, warned by the Force or however he did it. 

The room was empty. Ren was gone.

Hux frowned. So much for staying nearby in case he was needed. Not that he had ever really expected to be able to rely on Kylo Ren for anything. 

At least it made it easier to leave.

\----

He was slightly astonished to note that he’d lost almost an entire day to Ren’s tender mercies. His comm was practically groaning under the weight of all his unread messages, and then all the follow-ups to them from people who weren't accustomed to waiting and knew that if Hux didn't return a message he was probably dead.

Still, most of them would be quickly enough dealt with. He sent one off immediately to Snoke, an apology and a meeting request all in one. That was the only one that really mattered. He would scrape away at the rest at a reasonable speed.

He wished he were aboard the Finalizer again - he always wished that, really, but especially now when all he wanted was a meal and a proper drink and a medical droid, in that order. He’d had a shower, and that had helped, but his head hurt where he’d hit it and it was difficult to concentrate on his dispatches. But Snoke didn't believe in medical droids, or at any rate Hux had not seen one during his entire stay, and mealtime was long since over without a staggered array of shifts to cater for. 

Snoke's assistant, who quite possibly never slept, returned his meeting request at 0130, just when he was starting to consider going back to bed. He would meet with the Supreme Leader at 0900.

Hux steepled his hands in front of him and wondered, rather hopelessly, just how much he was going to be blamed for Kylo Ren’s recklessness this time.

At 0850 he was outside Snoke's doors, as pressed and polished as he could be under the circumstances. His hat sat directly on the bruise on his head, which was very unfortunate, and was making him feel rather testy.

He was just readjusting it subtly for the hundredth time when the doors slammed open, making the guards jump back. Out stormed Kylo Ren, his face a perfect mask of rage and frustration, red burning high on his cheekbones - and then he spotted Hux, and the rage was overlaid with shock and hurt, as though Hux had physically reached out and struck him across the face. He opened his mouth to speak.

_Not now,_ Hux thought at him, tucked his datapad firmly under his arm and marched himself into the audience chamber.

“General,” Snoke said.

“Supreme Leader.” Hux bowed, low and flawless. “I apologise for my absence yesterday.”

“I have already had the story from Kylo Ren.” Snoke leaned forward on his throne, and Hux felt him in his head, observing the state of him. “My student is irresponsible and overreached himself. You should not have been subjected to such treatment, General, and it is regrettable.”

Hux could hardly believe what he was hearing. An apology, from Snoke? When he’d missed an entire day of meetings? “Supreme Leader,” he said, “it was partially my own error in judgement.”

“I have seen what he did.” Snoke shook his head. “He heard what he wished to hear and drew his own conclusions. But I have made clear to him my thoughts. There will be no more of that behaviour.”

“No, my Lord,” Hux murmured.

“You are an important part of my plans for the future of the First Order, General. I am pleased that you have recovered so quickly and shown your willingness to return to the tasks which I have set you.”

“Thank you, my Lord.” Hux stood a little straighter.

“You will be pleased, I think, to know that those tasks will soon change.” Snoke looked piercingly at him. “I have nearly finished with Kylo Ren for the moment, and when I am no longer required to train him for so much of the day, I will have more time to spare for the planning of our next moves against the Resistance. The reports from your meetings have informed me, and I believe I know the way forward. I will need you at my right hand.”

Hux’s heart leapt, more than was strictly seemly. “I am honoured to assist you in whatever ways you require, as always, Supreme Leader.” 

“I know, General.”

Hux was a grown man, and had considered himself so for many years, but all the same it was hard to hide the extra bounce in his step as he headed towards his next meeting. 

He was composing a speech in his head as he walked, a favourite hobby and useful practice besides, and something he had not had the heart to attempt since Starkiller. Just the flow of the cadences of the words was soothing, uplifting, and so the hand that snaked out of a passageway and grabbed him by the collar was a complete surprise. 

“What did you _tell_ him?” Ren hissed, voice pitched at a hoarse whisper.

Hux grabbed Ren’s wrists and dug his thumbs in, separating Ren’s fists from his collar. He patted it fussily back into place. “I didn't have to tell him anything,” he said angrily, “he already knew, and now is neither the time nor the place, Ren - I have a meeting with the Dalfan Council in five minutes, and I will not be late.”

Ren stepped back. “You are radiating self-satisfaction,” he said, his upper lip curling. “You ought to tone it down. It's disgusting.”

Hux spun on his heel and stalked away, the walk everything he would have liked it to be yesterday at the height of his rage.

The Dalfan Council got a rather less conciliatory reception than they might have done. They seemed slightly intimidated, in fact, by Snoke's pet general - the only group he could remember who had been. It felt good, that modicum of respect, like a drink of water in desert heat. 

He rode that wave throughout the rest of his meetings, sharpened and ready on the attack. By the end of the day he was keyed up like a prizefighter, waiting for an opponent.

The universe was clearly rewarding him at last, because his opponent was waiting for him too: Kylo Ren was lurking near his room in a way he was certain was meant to be inconspicuous, but was nothing of the sort.

“You’d better come in,” Hux said, and opened the door for Ren to stomp past as though they were his rooms.

Ren stood in the middle of Hux’s sitting room, emitting rage in waves Hux almost thought he could see. Hux found that just this once, he was not moved.

“Well?” Hux said. “You wished to speak to me. So speak.”

“Snoke is sending me away,” Ren said, his voice like gravel. “My training is not finished - it can’t be - and he’s sending me away. He told me this morning that you had helped him make the decision.” He stared at Hux, his face eloquent with absolute betrayal. “Why?”

Hux squinted at Ren. “I did no such thing.”

“Then explain to me why you were so happy, this morning. I could feel it all through the house. It was practically indecent.” Ren looked as though he were in physical pain.

“Not that it’s anything to you,” Hux said acidly, “but Lord Snoke told me I’m to be freed from the endless meetings. I should think anyone would be happy to be given their life back.”

It was a half-truth, and Ren heard the gap. “What are you to be doing with this life, then?” His voice was very quiet. “Let me guess. You are to be elevated at his right hand. You are to help him plan the destruction of the Resistance, once and for all.”

“I’m a _general_ , Ren,” Hux pointed out. “Planning major military operations is actually what I do best.”

Ren snorted. “No. You’re a good general, but what you do best is look at people and make them feel utterly insignificant.” His mouth was a thin line, and his eyes were dangerously glittery. “I know how this went. You told him how much of a disappointment I am, you blamed the destruction of Starkiller on me, at every turn you’ve said exactly what you thought. And now he’s sending me away because all I do - all I do is destroy everything I touch.”

Hux shook his head. “No, Ren. I could have. I wanted to, at times, I’ll admit that. But I didn’t.”

Ren balled his fists up at his sides. “Then why is he sending me away?”

“And why is he keeping me?” Hux finished, for him.

Ren stared down at the floor. “You’re lying to me,” he said, a quaver in his voice he would probably have preferred Hux not to hear.

“You are being absurd,” Hux said sharply. “Have you forgotten _you can read minds?_ Just look in my head, you were in there enough yesterday to remember the way in. Listen to me.” He stepped forward and grabbed Ren’s wrists. “I do not know what he meant by saying I helped him to make the decision. Perhaps he meant indirectly. I am not responsible for whatever disgrace you may or may not be in, do you understand that?”

“But it would benefit you,” Ren said. His voice was very small now.

“Oh, for -” Hux sighed explosively and pulled one of Ren’s hands up to his face. _I did not do this,_ he thought. _And I wouldn’t._

All at once he felt Ren reach into his mind - it was a staggering invasion, like having someone rummaging through the carefully ordered layers of a drawer, tossing the contents hither and yon. Not the way it had been the day before, when he had just listened. But Hux closed his eyes and let him look.

And then as suddenly as Ren had been there, he was gone, and the silence of being alone in his head again was like the echo of a great and empty vaulted hall.

Ren choked. Grabbed back at Hux’s wrists, dropped them again, sank in a billow of black robes to his knees and put his face in his hands.

Hux shook his head hard, hoping it would settle the stirred feeling in his thoughts, and crouched next to him. “You see,” he said. “You saw.”

“I don’t understand,” Ren said, and choked again on whatever came after it.

“I think... I might,” Hux said slowly. And very carefully, he reached out and put a hand on Ren’s shoulder, while he thought hard about the variables of the situation and tried not to notice how Ren shook.

“I think,” he said, as the wheels in his brain spun, “I think we may be being played against one another.”

Ren sniffled. “What do you mean?”

“He’s told you your training is finished, for the moment. He says he’s sending you out on some sort of mission, I’m sure he hasn’t told you what. He sends you away bitter, aching, angry.”

Ren nodded.

“Meanwhile he keeps me close, where he can watch me, extract the maximum value from me, and ensure that the fault that brought down Starkiller is not repeated.” Hux squeezed the back of his own neck with his other hand. “He keeps you occupied, blames me to you and you to me, lets you become resentful as your power grows, lets me become complacent as he feeds my ego.”

Ren looked up, then, his eyes swimming with tears but a new understanding behind them.

“One day,” Hux continues, feeling more and more certain, and more and more grim, “when I become more of a threat than an asset - and that day will come - he will slip you the piece of information you need to remember that you’ve hated me for so long, if in fact you could ever forget it. That we are rivals and will always be rivals, and your path to glory involves your boot on my neck. And you will come back, and you will kill me. And then you will belong to him entirely, supposing that you have been granted everything you wanted.”

Ren’s mouth twisted again: grief. Fear. The terrible rightness of Hux’s statements.

“I cannot be ready yet, though,” he said, his voice still thick with tears.

“What makes you think that?” Hux said.

“Our training.” Ren dragged a sleeve across his face and tried to compose himself. “He does much of it directly mind-to-mind, implanting information into my subconscious. He says it is so that in the heat of battle, when I am beyond thought, it will be accessible to me nonetheless. But I have not yet learned the trigger.” He gave Hux a long look. “I am a weapon with no firing mechanism. How can I be ready?”

“No,” Hux said thoughtfully, and Ren narrowed his eyes, not following. “You have a firing mechanism. That you do not know how to reach it does not mean it is not there, and I think I know Snoke well enough to say that it is.”

And then the final piece of the puzzle fell into place, as if from a great height.

“I know how to get you beyond thought,” Hux said, suddenly electric with possibility.

Ren stared at him, his whole body a wordless question.

“I will take you to the Disciples.” Hux reached for Ren’s hand, without even really knowing why. “They can put you in that headspace, they can -”

“No,” Ren said, immovable.

“Why not?” Hux leaned in, wanting to shake Ren. “They will be absolutely discreet.”

“No. That’s not the issue.” Ren closed his eyes. “I don’t know what will happen when we find that trigger. It could be anything. I would as likely as not kill them all and burn the building to the ground. I cannot take the risk of being there.” 

Then he opened his eyes, and looked straight into Hux’s. “Can you do it? Here? Tonight?”

“Oh, that’s nice of you,” Hux said, deeply affronted. “You won’t kill them, but you want me to do it so you can kill _me_ when you bring the walls down on us.”

Ren laughed, the tiny and tragic laugh of a condemned man. “No. I can’t kill you.”

“I can’t stop you,” Hux said.

“I _won’t_ kill you,” Ren whispered, “don’t you know that by now?”

And he leaned forward, closed the space between them and kissed Hux, his mouth tear-salty and desperate, and - _oh,_ thought Hux, _oh._

_Now I understand._

Ren pulled away, and most of Hux wanted to follow, wanted to take the recompense for everything Ren had put him through. He let himself lean in just enough to claim a kiss for himself, and then sat back on his heels, and they looked at each other for a very long moment.

“So,” he said.

“So,” Ren echoed.

“That… was a _lot_ of things we will have to discuss, later.” Hux felt like an untethered boat in a vast ocean. And then Ren rested two fingers on the back of his hand, an anchor and a shoreline, and he gave Ren half a smile. “But it helps with… context.”

“As you say.” Ren returned the half-smile, though it faded nearly immediately. “How do we do this?”

“Are you certain you wish to?” Hux said softly. “There will be no coming back from it, not for you - not for either of us if Snoke finds out, and I don't see how he cannot. Perhaps we can find another plan.”

Ren was very pale, now that the blotches of weeping had begun to fade. “And perhaps he’ll send me to the other side of the galaxy tomorrow, so far away that there will be nothing I can do, and nothing you can do for me. I would, were I him. And you will be monitored every second of the rest of your life. No. If we are to do this, it must be now, tonight, while we can still have the element of surprise.”

Hux sighed. “As odd as it feels to say this, I think you're probably right.”

“I think this may be our best option,” Ren said, “if I understand what you mean to do correctly.”

“There is a way,” Hux said, “of whipping and being whipped.” It was so strange to speak of it. “I learnt it at the Academy. There was no avoiding one's stripes. The clever amongst us worked out how to make it something… almost meditative. I believe I can show you.”

Ren nodded. “Give me thirty minutes,” he said. “And… perhaps it would be wise if you were prepared to leave. Suddenly. And didn't think too loudly about it.”

“I understand,” Hux said.

\----

He turned to the mental exercises he had drilled himself on, as a child - the star systems of the Empire and their planets, in descending order of their importance as military strategy points. His hands folded clothing without thinking, equally drilled. Before Ren came back, he found he had time to consider the room, the environment; it was not what he would have chosen, but none of this was.

Still, it would serve, because it had to.

He let Ren back in, and gestured him over to the divan. “Sit,” he said. “And for the sake of everything you hold dear in this world, please, please listen, because we haven't much time.”

Ren nodded. “First,” he said, and opened the top of his bag. Across the pile of black fabric inside, a knotted cord whip gleamed, a promise and a threat.

Hux considered it for a moment, and then shut the bag, pushing it back into Ren's hands. “Maybe later,” he said. “That will make you bleed. I am not certain we can afford that.”

He paced back and forth in front of Ren, his voice low and his words rapid. “What we are going to do is this. You will strip. You will lie across the table, and hold to it. I will whip you, and it will hurt, and I will stop when I can see you have had enough, and you will trust me to know when that is. You will count the lashes, but silently. I will count aloud. I do not mind whether you make any sounds, but I recommend that you don't try. You, above all, must concentrate on sinking into it. There will come a point when you will detach from the reality of the situation; let go. Ride that wave, let it fill you, and be free of your higher consciousness. What happens after that is no longer up to me.” Hux watched Ren’s eyes, to make sure he was paying attention. “If you must stop me, for any reason, you will say _Endor_ and I will stop at once. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” Ren said. “May I ask - if you won't use the whip, what you will use?”

Hux settled his hands at his hips, on either side of the wide leather belt. “What I was taught to use,” he said.

“Very well,” said Ren. He had not worn all of the many layers he usually affected, only a loose shirt of linen and a pair of simple breeches under his long black robes. It was a matter of moments for him to lay them all aside, and he stood before Hux, naked - and then knelt, easily, gracefully, bowing his head.

The lines of his neck and back, still marred with bruising but so freely entrusted to him now, made Hux want to stare at them until he had memorised them. Instead, he trailed his fingertips across Ren’s shoulder, a claim and a statement.

“On the table,” he said.

He had taken the pillows from his bed, to give Ren a tiny measure of cushioning. The table would help to take the weight off his knees, while giving Hux access to his entire back, buttocks and thighs - all bruised already, and how he wished they could wait until Ren was whole. He could only hope that perhaps it would help.

He unbuckled his belt. The leather was heavy, solid in his hands, softened enough with wearing and the heat of his body that he knew it would flex as it should. He gripped the buckle, the metal cool against his palm - all he needed was the strap. 

Ren was laid out for him now, his hands curled around the legs of the table and his eyes closed.

He lifted his arm, and brought the belt down with a snap.

“One,” he said, over Ren’s stuttering breath, and wound up again. _Snap_. “Two.”

The trick, he knew, was to set up a rhythm, and to vary only the location of the strokes. This was not about surprises, or even truly about the pain. This was a dance, of sorts, the two men and the strap falling over and over. 

\----

He found his rhythm quickly, and stayed in it, and so did Ren: he had made no sound for some minutes now, and Hux was counting almost under his breath, just loud enough to keep up the pretense that Ren could hear him still. He was barely even flinching now when Hux hit him; the broad leather of the belt had reddened all the skin Hux could reach, but he had been very careful with the angle of his swings and had not caught him with the edges of the belt, which might have broken the skin.

Ren's eyes had stayed shut, but his hands were still tight on the legs of the table, and it was them that Hux was watching the most closely. It wouldn't be too much longer, he thought, with a thrill of adrenalin up his spine, counting out another number, and another, waiting for whatever he was about to unleash.

When it finally happened, Hux almost missed it, so focused had he been on laying the next stripe precisely between the previous two. The belt cracked over Ren’s ribs, just where he’d intended it - and Ren’s hands finally, finally slackened, falling to the floor with a soft thud, his whole body suddenly loose. Hux caught the end of the belt in his hand, leaned over Ren, and reached out to feel his pulse.

When his fingertips touched Ren’s skin, electricity arced between them, a visible spark. He jerked back, shaking his stinging fingers, and then all the hairs on his body rose, an unbearable prickling, and he stepped back from the man on the table without even knowing he’d moved.

An aura of electricity glowed around Ren, lighting his skin with bluish flickers like aurora. His eyes snapped open, all pupil, black as space, and he seemed to float upward from the table as gravity gave up pretending it mattered. Hux backed up further.

Ren's hands came up and the crackling energy coalesced around them, humming and spitting and lunging towards anything that would take it to ground. He was looking through Hux, not at him, his face terribly blank, set, and Hux wondered who it was behind that empty gaze - it couldn't be Ren, always too expressive for his own good.

Then Ren brought his hands together, the lightning knitting around itself in a glowing ball, smaller and smaller and brighter and brighter within the cage of his fingers as he clasped them and slowly, slowly, brought them up to his forehead.

A flash - a _snap_ like the belt magnified a thousand times, knocking Hux off his feet.

He blinked helplessly against the light spots dancing across his vision, scrambling onto his hands and knees even as they began to clear. Ren was crumpled on the floor like a discarded doll, one arm outflung, a leg twisted painfully beneath him, as though he had been dropped from a height. His face was slack and absolutely colourless, bar the thread of blood creeping from his nose.

Hux crawled to him, rolled him onto his side to free his leg, and pressed his trembling hand under the angle of Ren's jaw, desperately hoping for a pulse.

It was there, if weak, and a shiver of pure relief racked Hux. He grabbed Ren’s robe from the divan and threw it over him, suddenly unable to bear how defenseless he looked, curled naked on the floor, bruised and half-dead.

“Wake up,” he whispered, taking Ren’s hand in both of his - cold, it was, and he chafed it gently. “You have to wake up.”

Ren's fingers twitched against his, and he squeezed them, willing energy into him, willing him to open his eyes.

“Come on, come on,” he breathed, a chant and an invocation. “I need you, I _need_ you with me, Ren, _come on_.”

Ren's eyelashes fluttered, and he groaned.

“That’s it,” Hux said, and pressed Ren’s hand against his own sternum. “Come back to me.”

Ren's eyes opened slowly, dazed. “H’x,” formed on his lips, no voice behind the word.

“Yes,” Hux said. “We did it.”

Ren turned his head to look up at Hux. “We have -” He cleared his throat, tried again. “We have to go. He knows.”

“All right,” Hux said, galvanised. “Your clothes.” He pulled Ren up to a sitting position, helped him on with his shirt, by which time he had sufficient command of his body to manage his breeches while Hux fussed with the buckles of his boots and the fasteners of his robe.

“Can you run?” Hux asked, as he adjusted the cowl of the robe around Ren’s shoulders, and clipped his lightsaber onto his belt. 

“Yes,” Ren said, and wobbled to his feet. “Come on. There's a speeder in the courtyard, we can make it.”

Hux threw both of their bags over his shoulder, his belt loose and crooked around his waist, and caught Ren around the waist, pulling Ren’s arm over his shoulders too.

Together, they ran.

There were sounds of alarm starting in the house, Hux could hear it, raised voices and boots running across polished floors. “Faster,” Ren said, and Hux matched his pace, wondering where he was finding the energy. He was giving Hux less of his weight to support, and Hux was starting to think they might make it after all when they skidded around a corner into the huge atrium of Snoke's mansion.

Then the doors at the back of the room slammed open, and Ren shoved Hux behind him so hard he had to grab Ren’s shoulders to keep from falling.

“ _Kylo Ren,_ ” Snoke boomed. “Explain yourself, apprentice.”

“I will not,” Ren growled, teeth gritted. “These powers are mine and should be under my control.”

“And my General?” 

Hux had never wanted to hide so much in his life. He knew it was Snoke's influence, but he could barely stay standing. 

Ren's hand groped for Hux's, found it; squeezed it; dropped it. “He is also mine,” Ren said, and the steely determination in his tone erased most of the resentment Hux felt at being thus claimed.

“You know not what you do, Kylo Ren.” Snoke's laugh echoed through the hall. “You stand ready to defy me, your Master, for _him?_ ”

“My training is finished,” Ren said. “I have no master now.”

“I am still greater in the Force,” Snoke said; Hux felt the chill in the air. “I will show you who is the Master.”

“Try me,” Ren said, and his lightsaber was in his hand, humming, spitting red fire.

“Put down that toy,” Snoke said, “and fight me like a true Sith.” Ball lightning crackled in the air above his palms.

Ren strode forward, Hux a step behind him - he wasn't sure what he could do, but cowering in the corner was not an option. Then Ren handed his saber hilt back to Hux, who clutched it in both hands, wondering if it would even respond if he triggered it.

Ren brought his hands up from his sides, and Hux saw the aurora haloing his hands again. Snoke threw the ball lightning towards Ren, and Ren caught it, the aurora flaring briefly green and then absorbing the extra power. Ren shoved at the air, and lightning flicked out, away from him, arcing wildly before it touched Snoke, who laughed again. “Is that all? Truly, I had thought you capable of more.”

Ren was closing the distance with Snoke, still crackling with energy. Hux caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye - Snoke's guards, finally, and had they been his crew they would have been there sooner.

With a fatalistic feeling, he thumbed the trigger stud on Ren's lightsaber, was slightly astonished when it did light, and tried to look less ridiculous than he felt as he held it out, guarding himself and Ren’s back.

He felt, before he saw, one of the guards raise his blaster to fire, and swung the glowing blade up to parry - the swing was wild, his form terrible and unstudied, but the blaster bolt caromed off the blade and Hux bared his teeth in a feral grin. 

The guards tried again, and he deflected two more bolts, leaving the third to hit the floor. He almost thought he might be getting the hang of this.

Behind him, Ren wove lightning cages, trapping and reflecting Snoke's power. He couldn't spare the time to look, which saddened him - this would have been something to write down for future generations - but they were shooting again, and he had to concentrate.

Then Ren grabbed his left elbow, and sent, raw around the edges, _Help._

“I _am_ ,” Hux panted, as he bounced another shot back at the shooter.

_No. Help me. He's too strong._

Hux swallowed. _Do it,_ he thought back. _Just take what you need._

He shifted the lightsaber to a one-hand grip, laced his fingers into Ren's as they slid down his arm. Then a wall of sudden fatigue slammed into him, and he nearly dropped the saber entirely, staggering as Ren drained life-force out of him to prop up his own flagging energy.

The hilt was heavy, and he ached, all over, as though everything was suddenly happening in high gravity. He got the blade up just in time to block the next two shots, and managed to keep it from fishtailing too obviously at the end of his swing, but oh, this wasn't going to be a solution, it wasn't, and he sent _hurry_ and wished uselessly for a blaster of his own and blocked and blocked and blocked.

Ren pulled again at his energy, too soon and too much. His hands went numb, and Ren grabbed his wrist as his grip slackened. 

He clutched the saber hilt desperately, trying to keep hold of it, and blocked a bolt - but the impact knocked the hilt from his deadened fingers, and it deactivated and clattered to the floor.

_No,_ he thought, and bent to grab it, and the guard took aim at the back of Ren's unprotected head - 

Hux leapt, and took the bolt in his shoulder - 

and he and Ren screamed in unison as the pain arrowed through their Force-connection -

and everything went a blinding mag-flare _white_ -

ozone and dust and something soft was over his face -

and he was on his knees, with Kylo Ren’s cloak wrapped around him - with Kylo Ren wrapped around him.

Ren was gasping, nearly sobbing with exhaustion, his arms tight around Hux’s back. _Hux,_ he thought, the only coherent thing in the maelstrom of terror and triumph and tiredness.

_Is he gone?_ Hux thought.

_I can’t sense him,_ Ren sent back. Hux looked up, through the dancing spots on his retinas.

Where Snoke had been, there was a blast mark, and a blackened heap Hux didn’t want to look too closely at.

The guards all seemed to have been knocked unconscious by the blast. Hux assumed that the only reason he wasn’t was that he had been protected by Ren.

_What now,_ Ren sent, and even mentally, he sounded lost, confused, at the end of his endurance.

_Are there medics in this place?_ Hux asked wearily. _Because I need one. But I think there’s something we have to do first._

Ren sent him a question particle, not even a word, too tired for words.

Hux reached up with his good arm, sank his hand into Ren’s hair, and pulled him into a kiss.

_We have defeated the only person who can stop either of us,_ Hux thought. _Kiss your new Supreme Leader, Ren._

Ren chuckled wearily, in his mind, and bit Hux's lower lip sharply. _Kiss your new Prince of Ren, Supreme Leader._

_I shall, at length,_ Hux thought, the title thrilling him despite the pain of his wound. _Later._

\----

It did work out to be quite a lot later, by the time he’d summoned the Finalizer, and let the droids fuss over his shoulder and wrap it in bacta bandages. Ren lurked silently in the background, loath to let Hux out of his sight, and willing to submit to a certain amount of medical treatment himself if that was the only way to keep himself in the medbay.

Then there were a lot of people to talk to, and he recorded a speech to holo to be broadcast to the fleet - _his fleet_ \- informing them of the new changes in leadership. He resisted the urge to record it in Snoke's throne room, and instead recorded it on the bridge of the Finalizer, which seemed grand enough and quite suitable as a flagship.

Ren, he thought, was probably doing something similar for his own dark channels. He had vanished while Hux did the boring work of producing the holo, and had not reappeared yet.

Eventually some of his senior staff insisted that they could oversee the workings of the galaxy for a few hours and he should get some rest, sir, really. By that time, the painkillers the droids had dosed him with were beginning to wear off, and he was disposed to agree with his staff.

His quarters were quiet and dark, and so familiar, so good. He headed straight for the bed without turning up the lights.

“Hello, Supreme Leader Hux,” purred a voice.

Hux smiled. “Prince Kylo.” He shucked his boots off, stood them where they belonged - and oh, it was so nice to be where his boots belonged - and hung up his jacket, next to his other jackets, and crawled into bed, his bed.

Ren was lounging, warm and welcoming, on the side of his bed that was normally empty. On the whole, Hux thought, this new state of affairs was an improvement.

He lay back and sighed deeply. “So this. Is this an occurrence I can expect on a regular basis?”

“I was once told,” Ren said, trailing a fingertip across Hux’s collarbone, “by someone fairly wise, that perhaps if I listened to you more often I might find myself more successful. And I seem to recall you saying that you might like to be kissed.”

“I might,” Hux admitted easily. “Although I think it is generally traditional for the military and Force-using heads of the Empire to have a somewhat more contentious relationship.”

“You would be Tarkin to my Vader?” He could hear Ren’s smile. “I believe we might do better. The Grand Moff never gave Vader such a gift as you gave me today.”

“Oh?” Hux rolled over, to lie on his side with his injured shoulder up.

“Your pain.” Ren brushed the edge of the bandage with his fingertips. “It was all I needed to allow me to summon enough power to defeat Snoke. Your life force was important. But your pain - and the fact that you took that shot for me - that was critical.”

“I am sorry if I damaged your saber,” Hux said, feeling warm.

“It has seen worse.” Ren stroked the line of his sternum. “You did well, for an untrained novice.”

“Thank you,” Hux said, deciding to take that compliment at its face value, however backhanded it was.

“I knew you would. I used to hate you for that, you know.” Ren’s hand tapped emphasis on Hux's chest. He did know. “But I have learnt that you are always to be relied upon, in whatever situation I have dragged us into. And that is more valuable than my pride.”

The warm feeling bloomed into something almost painful, and he trapped Ren’s hand in his, not knowing how to say it any other way. “I wish I could have watched you fight,” he said, instead of the large and dangerous words he felt lurking in his throat. “Someday you shall show me.”

Ren summoned the tiniest bit of lightning, a spark that danced over their knuckles and was gone. In its brief blue light, Hux saw Ren - as tired as he was, but looking more content than he had ever thought to see Kylo Ren.

“You will do much at my side, from now on,” Hux mused softly. “But tonight - tonight, my Prince, will you sleep?”

“I would like nothing more,” Ren said, and pulled the blanket over them both.


End file.
